My writing skills being what they are, I frequently struggle with finding original or at least not overused ways to express my positive impressions of places and points of interest. But that is nothing compared to the search for ways to describe a lukewarm impression. The places that do not…
The city of Bergamo as a whole (covering both the Upper and the Lower City) has been on the tentative World Heritage list for over a dozen years. Although I have already seen a couple of inscribed places less deserving the recognition, in my humble estimation, it feels about right…
We have not set foot in Bergamo in the past and made it a defined target on this trip. It is a kind of town that invariably leaves a positive impression on any visitor without tipping the scales on the exceptional side. Città Alta, the historic core of Bergamo, is…
The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a curious specimen on the World Heritage list. It is not altogether unremarkable, but also not in any sense surpassing to warrant special recognition. And although its name is fully spelled out on the entry to the list, the inscription is entirely…
Milan, a renowned Mecca of shopping and fashion, is rarely considered to be a sightseeing destination. That reputation is largely deserved, as even the most ardently patriotic locals are likely to agree that their city is not at all pretty. Impressive buildings pop up here or there, some residential streets…
I have now come to the end of my photographic material from the summertime trip to Greece. Over the course of a dozen and a half essays, we revisited places on Crete (Minoan sites, Heraklion, Psychro cave, other locations, not forgetting the unbelievable sunrise), on Santorini (Oia, including sunset, and…
The last ruins that we visited in Greece was Mycenae, the center of the Late Bronze Age civilization that was the main precursor to the classical Ancient Greek culture. Mycenaeans’ period of domination over the Mediterranean came around the time when the Minoan civilization – which we encountered on Crete…
Delphi was the sacred center of the world for the Ancient Greeks and undoubtedly a remarkable achievement of purposeful architecture, a sanctuary built into the challenging landscape to inspire awe and worship. Unfortunately, very little is left of its former glory, and the visual impact is fairly muted. After experiencing…
Three geographically dispersed monasteries in Greece are inscribed together on the World Heritage list as the great examples of the golden age of Byzantine art. We could only fit one into our itinerary, and our choice fell on Hosios Loukas, the largest and likely the oldest of the three. The…
I always find myself awed by grandiose edifices. Beholding the Parthenon up close, unfailingly grandiose despite its ruined state blended with a construction site, made the visit to Acropolis instantly worthwhile. Built in the 5th century BC to honor goddess Athena, the patron of the city, the temple survived rise…
Common wisdom holds Athens as a single-day destination, with one must-see sight and little else beyond that which is exceptional. Its abundance of ancient ruins may allow a true connoisseur to stretch the stay to a couple of days, but we are far from such connoisseurs. We made Athens the…
This was not exactly a spontaneous trip – we planned it almost three months in advance – but it did come up fairly spontaneously back in August. After returning from Greece, I did not really expect to have either time or opportunity to take another journey this calendar year, but…
It may sound unexpected coming from yours truly, but if there was a day that stood out on our two-weeks-plus-long trip to Greece, it was in a sense the laziest day on the itinerary. For the last full day of our stay on Naxos, we penciled in a day-long boating…
The second part of our day cruise that first took us to Delos was Mykonos. A renowned “party island”, it may have been completely ignored by us if not for the fixed itinerary of the cruise. We were given about three hours to explore its eponymous Chora, which was barely…
For all of the obvious associations between Greece and the ancient cultures, it has a surprisingly modest number of recognized World Heritage sites: 18 properties spread across 37 individual locations. There are none on either Crete, Santorini, or Naxos, so my first chance to improve my visited count came well…
Our time on Naxos was structured as a sequence of day-long excursions. One of those was a chauffeured private tour around the island, with stops at several points of interest. Naxos is the largest island of the Cyclades archipelago and is relatively sparsely populated (the number of permanent residents here…
If we fell in love with one place in Greece, it was Naxos. Although it is not exactly unknown, it does not attract as many visitors as some other Aegean islands. That is partially due to its relative un-flashiness and in large part due to the fact that it does…
The village of Oia enjoys incontestable top billing among Santorini sights – to the point that some travel publications caption a photograph of Oia as simply “Santorini” – but we took time to explore other parts of the island. Our intent to take a closer look at the main town…
Oia – pronounced EE-yah, the O is silent – is one of the most recognizable destinations in the world and a place that always features on the first-time itineraries of the Aegean island-hopping. The blue-domed white churches are Oia’s calling card, regularly appearing in travel publications and social media adverts.…
The terrace of our apartment on Santorini was facing west and we were able to add a pretty sunset to the incredible sunrise that we saw on Crete. In fact, the activity of sunset-watching turns the western side of the village of Oia into a madhouse, with most paths and…